4TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM OF THE ANTHONY BURGESS CENTRE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ANGERS, FRANCE, NOVEMBER 19-20, 2010

Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare were twin stars in Anthony Burgess’s intellectual and artistic firmament. Inspired by them, he wrote and composed abundantly, from his MA thesis on Marlowe’s Dr Faustus to the last novel published in his lifetime, A Dead Man in Deptford. He absorbed Shakespeare along the way, spawning Nothing Like the Sun, Enderby’s Dark Lady, a biography, short stories, articles both journalistic and scholarly, a film script, a television series, songs, even a ballet suite for full orchestra. In this, its fourth international symposium, the Anthony Burgess Centre examined the contrasted influences of these two Elizabethan heavyweights on Burgess and his work, exploring what they brought to it and what he, in turn contributes to our understanding of them.

The programme included:Speakers Charles Nicholl, author or The Reckoning on the murder of Marlowe and The Lodger, Shakespeare on Silver StreetAndrew Biswell, author of The Real Life of Anthony Burgess and Director of the International Anthony Burgess FoundationPaul Phillips, author of A Clockwork Counterpoint: the Music and Literature of Anthony BurgessDominique Goy-Blanquet, Emeritus professor of Elizabethan literature and author of Shakespeare’s History Plays, from Chronicle to StageAlan Shockley, author of Music in the Words: musical form and counterpoint in the twentieth century novel